The Root

        Deep, Love, yea, very deep.
    And in the dark exiled,
I have no sense of light but still to creep
And know the breast, but not the eyes. Thy child
Saw ne'er his mother near, nor if she smiled;
    But only feels her weep.

        Yet clouds and branches green
    There be aloft, somewhere,
And winds, and angel birds that build between,
As I believe--and I will not despair;
For faith is evidence of things not seen.
    Love! if I could be there!

I will be patient, dear.
    Perchance some part of me
Puts forth aloft and feels the rushing year
And shades the bird, and is that happy tree
Then were it strength to serve and not appear,
    And bliss, though blind, to be.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, born on November 21, 1863, and died on May 12, 1944, was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name Q. His legacy includes a vast body of critical and anthological work, most notably 'The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1900'. Quiller-Couch was knighted in 1910 and also served as a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. His works have influenced many, including writers like Virginia Woolf.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Anecdote For Fathers.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Why This Volume Is So Thin.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

The White Moth.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge; that branchless ash,
Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank w...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

An Evening Walk In Spring

It was but some few nights ago
I wandered down this quiet lane;
I pray that I may never know
The feelings then I felt, again.
The leaves were shining all about,
You might almost have seen them springing;
I heard the cuckoos simple shout,
And all the little birds were singing.
It was not dull, the air was clear,
All lovely sights and sounds to deal,
My eyes could see, my ears could hear,
Only my heart, it would not feel;
And yet that it should not be so,
My mind kept telling me within;
Though nought was wrong that I did know,
I thought I must have done some sin.
For I am sure as I can be,
That they who have been wont to look
On all in Natures face they see,
Even as in the Holy Book;
They who with pure and humble eyes
Have gazed and re...

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Deserted Garden

I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature laid
To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I;
The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne'ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

To Albert Dürer.

("Dans les vieilles forêts.")

[X., April 20, 1837.]


Through ancient forests - where like flowing tide
The rising sap shoots vigor far and wide,
Mounting the column of the alder dark
And silv'ring o'er the birch's shining bark -
Hast thou not often, Albert Dürer, strayed
Pond'ring, awe-stricken - through the half-lit glade,
Pallid and trembling - glancing not behind
From mystic fear that did thy senses bind,
Yet made thee hasten with unsteady pace?
Oh, Master grave! whose musings lone we trace
Throughout thy works we look on reverently.
Amidst the gloomy umbrage thy mind's eye
Saw clearly, 'mong the shadows soft yet deep,
The web-toed faun, and Pan the green-eyed peep,
Who deck'd with flowers the cave where thou might'st rest,
Leaf...

Victor-Marie Hugo

Nutting

It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet oer my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Towrd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame,
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,, and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! Oer pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
...

William Wordsworth

The Buried Life

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness oer me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!    
But theres a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne;
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,    
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?        
I knew the mass of men conceald
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveald
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprovd;
I knew they ...

Matthew Arnold